“Dick Rowland Image”
”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”
– Health Care Interventionism: A Case Study
By Christopher Westley
Ludwig von Mises Institute
We are often told that 40 million Americans lack health insurance, and
that this is a scandal caused by greedy health care providers in the
private sector constantly raising health care costs. This simply must be
true because it is told to us by Those Who Care. Of course, there is
much more to this story than the storytellers let on. Many of the
uninsured are uninsured by choice, and not by necessity. Health care
costs rise in response to providers trying to recover losses emanating
from government interventions into an alarmingly socialized medical
industry. (That prices tend to fall in industries marked by scant
intervention leads one to the conclusion that if “public servants”
really cared about helping the poor and sick, they would simply go
away.)
CONTACT: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Ave., Auburn, AL
36832, 334/321-2100, fax 334/321-2119, email mailto:mail@mises.org
https://www.mises.org.
– A Retrospective on Johnson’s Poverty War
By Adam Young
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Only mass production can raise the standard of living for the masses and
eliminate poverty. Government can never reduce poverty since it does not
produce, but only consumes and squanders wealth. Lyndon Johnson’s silly
“war” on poverty impoverished those it claimed to help and impoverished
all Americans with lost opportunities and lost liberty by weakening and
obstructing those institutions that encourage, facilitate and reward
productivity and exchange. The War on Poverty was in reality a State
sponsored war on the opportunities of the poor and on all Americans.
CONTACT: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Ave., Auburn, AL
36832, 334/321-2100, fax 334/321-2119, email mailto:mail@mises.org
https://www.mises.org.
– How Not to Be Poor
By Blake Bailey
Brief Analysis No. 428, National Center for Policy Analysis
About 31 million Americans live in households with incomes below the
poverty level, according to the latest U.S. Census data. Poverty is more
than a lack of income. It is also the consequence of specific behaviors
and decisions. The 2001 Census data clearly show that dropping out of
high school, staying single, having children without a spouse, working
only part time or not working at all substantially increase the chances
of long-term poverty. Certain behaviors are a recipe for success. Among
those who finish high school, get married, have children only within a
marriage and go to work, the odds of long-term poverty are virtually
nil.
CONTACT: National Center for Policy Analysis, 12655 N. Central Expy.,
Suite 720, Dallas, TX 75243, 972/386-6272, fax 972/386-0924,
https://www.ncpa.org.
– Social Security And Stockmarket Risk
By Matt Moore
Brief Analysis No. 429, National Center for Policy Analysis
Over the long term, stock market investment can provide the foundation
for a safe and secure retirement. Over the lowest-earning 35-year period
in history, the market’s average annual rate of return was 2.7 percent
per year. Even workers retiring in a year equal to this worst-oftimes
scenario would receive benefits greater than the current Social Security
system can afford to pay them.
CONTACT: National Center for Policy Analysis, 12655 N. Central Expy.,
Suite 720, Dallas, TX 75243, fax 972/386-6272, 972/386-0924,
https://www.ncpa.org.
Above articles are quoted from Heritage Foundation, The Insider February
2003 https://www.heritage.org
”Roots (Food for Thought)”
New York Times Calls for Return of DDT
Author: James M. Taylor
Published: The Heartland Institute 02/01/2003
By virtually all accounts, the New York Times is one of the most liberal
mainstream newspapers in the United States. That is why a house
editorial in the December 22 edition has created quite a stir.
“The world is losing the war against malaria,” states the Times’ unnamed
editorial writer. “Malaria today kills more than a million people a year
in Africa alone. One reason is that wealthy nations have limited the use
of one of the best weapons, a pesticide that once saved hundreds of
millions of lives.”
That weapon is DDT.
“Very little DDT is needed to spray houses twice a year,” added the
Times. “The evidence about DDT’s effects on humans is inconclusive. The
uncertainties must be weighed against a demonstrated effectiveness in
fighting a disease that now kills 1 in 20 African children. DDT also
costs one-quarter the price of the alternative, pyrethroids.”
Until an effective substitute for DDT is found, argues the Times,
“wealthy nations should be helping poor countries with all available
means — including DDT.”
A Life-Saving Chemical
During World War II, American scientists adapted a Swiss moth-killing
chemical into the single most effective weapon ever invented in the war
against mosquitoes. The development and widespread use of DDT saved
millions of lives worldwide and won its inventor a Nobel Prize.
In the 1960s and 1970s, however, public relations campaigns launched by
anti-chemical activist groups scapegoated DDT for such alleged harms as
cancer in humans and weakened egg shells and declining bird populations.
Scientific research discredited those claims. An EPA administrative law
judge held as much shortly before the agency nevertheless gave in to
special-interest pressure and banned DDT in 1972.
“DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man,” concluded the judge after
seven months of hearings and 9,000 pages of testimony. “DDT is not a
mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. … The use of DDT under the
regulations involved here does not have a deleterious effect on
freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.”
The EPA judge’s conclusions followed directly on the heels of a report
by the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded: “To only a few
chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. … [I]n a little more
than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria
that otherwise would have been inevitable.”
DDT Still Needed
Although the use of DDT effectively eliminated malaria in the United
States and other developed countries before falling victim to
environmental activist groups, the children of third-world countries
have not been so lucky. With DDT use limited by pressure from
environmental activist groups, 1 in every 20 children dies from malaria
in sub-Sahara Africa, according to Steven Milloy, adjunct scholar at the
Cato Institute.
Malaria and other previously defeated diseases are returning to the U.S.
in the absence of DDT spraying. “About 1,200 cases of malaria are
diagnosed in the U.S. each year,” noted Henry Miller, a fellow at the
Hoover Institution, “and it won’t be long until West Nile virus
infections far exceed that level.”
“The practices of environmental advocacy groups are seriously degrading
public health capabilities in the United States. Our public health
threats are real, and growing,” said Donald Roberts, professor of
tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the
Health Sciences.
It’s one thing for scientists to rebut the claims of anti-pesticide
activist groups; it’s quite another for the New York Times to do so.
“Today, malaria control relies mainly on insecticide-treated bed nets
and drugs, most of which have lost effectiveness as malaria grows
resistant,” states the New York Times. “DDT, which is sprayed on the
inside walls of houses twice a year, is used in only about 24 countries.
Wealthy nations that banned DDT at home will not pay for its use
elsewhere. But the poorest nations depend on such donations. America
used DDT to eradicate malaria, as did southern Europe and India.”
James M. Taylor is managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
Above article is quoted from Heartland Institute, Environment & Climate
News February 2003 https://www.heartland.org
”Evergreen (Today’s Quotes)”
“The quality of a university is measured more by the kind of student it
turns out than the kind it takes in.” — Robert Kibbee
“Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian,
toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to
conceal their record of ruthless, beaverlike tunneling to the top.”
— Camille Paglia
”’Edited by Richard O. Rowland, president of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached at (808) 487-4959 or by email at:”’ mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com ”’For more information, see its Web site at:”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/